


Let's Be Friends, Okay?

by PomegranatePomsom



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguously Southern Clown, Blood and Gore, Friendship, Gen, Gift Giving, Michael Loves One (1) Clown, Not Beta Read, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 03:10:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PomegranatePomsom/pseuds/PomegranatePomsom
Summary: Michael meets a nice clown. To show his admiration he gives him a very personal gift.





	Let's Be Friends, Okay?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I wrote and edited this in the span of a day, which is very quick for me. I hope it's up to your standards!
> 
> CW for gore and brief mentions of sexual assault.

Michael, who despite his reputation for being ambivalent and uncaring towards everything he did not outright hate, had always retained a fondness for the circus. Perhaps it was the lights, the mysticism, the amusement, or the fond association with better days that kept this tiny spark alive in his heart, even as he himself sunk into an emotional void. One could (and the few doctors who knew about this fondness had) speculate until they were numb in the mind and slack in the jaw, but it made little difference. Perhaps there were no particular reasons. Perhaps Michael just liked the circus and its folk.

 

Clowns especially piqued his interest. Persons with white faces, dressed all-out in silly regalia and out to startle, to entertain-- certainly, a touch of inspiration for his face and shell were drawn from them. And while a normal adult man wouldn’t have such childish fantasies, Michael had a small-- but burning-- desire to return to the circus and its made-up charges.

 

He’d thought that it was impossible, that nothing so bright and exciting could happen in a realm like the Entity’s. Imagine his surprise then, one day, when he was set inside a trial and found himself in a cluster of carnival tents.

 

His heart, usually so steady, shot off to the races. He was smitten instantly. He stomped his boot down on the test of strength, ringing the bell; he spent a few precious moments throwing his knife into the target practice, retrieving it, then stepping back and tossing it again, each time with quite an impressive show of precision. He stood patiently before the fortune teller, bounced on his toes just slightly, anticipating the little slip of paper it printed off for him. When the little _krr krr krr_ of the printer finished and the animatronic laughed at him, he snatched the paper up.

 

_You are too tense. Relaxation and an open mind will lead you to new opportunities._

 

Ah, yes. Just like ones back home, this fortune teller was full of shit. Michael crumpled up the paper and tossed it to the ground.

 

Over the course of his amusement, he’d noted-- but largely ignored-- that quite a few generators had gone off. He should probably attempt to chase the survivors; if he didn’t catch at least one of them the Entity would be gnawing on his brain for hours. While not painful, it was obnoxious, and if there was anything Michael hated more than having his brain stirred around like soup, it was being annoyed.

 

So he bid _adieu_ to the little carnival, vowing to return to it should he be placed here again. He exited the little track of tents, knife raised… but something caught his eye. It was a wagon, bright red, with a-- was that a horse? An actual living animal that wasn’t a survivor or a bird?

 

He stalked over to the wagon. How had he missed it before? It contrasted so heavily with the bleary, bleak landscape of the rest of the map, it should have caught his eye immediately.

 

He approached the horse cautiously. It was rotted and malformed, its ribs exposed and a third eye pressed into its forehead. He held out his hand for it to smell; it extended its muzzle briefly, flared its nostrils once, then exhaled and relaxed. Good to know it wasn’t as skittish as its two-eyed counterpart tended to be.

 

With that he entered the wagon. It had looked small from the outside, but inside it was quite roomy. There was a bed pushed against one wall, sloppily made, with a table against the other. Strewn across it were all sorts of curious things: glass bottles and jugs, beakers, test tubes in racks, syringes, and a bolted-down lockbox, among other things. A large ceramic ashtray, perfect for bludgeoning, sat among the mess, a half-spent cigar teetered on its edge.

 

He picked it up and brought it to his nose, giving it a curious whiff. The sourness of the tobacco and its paper made his nose wrinkle; the off-putting, indeterminable smell that accompanied it (from the owner, perhaps?) certainly didn’t help. He returned it to its place.

 

Standing in the space between the bed and the table, he glanced around. The walls were papered with the three essential P’s: pin-ups, posters and “pornography”. Painted images of a young man with fiery red hair adorned some of the posters, though they were so old that the text had mostly faded. The pin-ups were standard fair-- all conventionally attractive women with long hair, big tits and wasp waists. Even if Michael had any attraction to women at all, they wouldn’t have done anything for him.

 

The pornography though, that certainly caught his eye. It was “snuff porn”, specifically-- titillating images of people in their death throes. It was the kind of imagery the good doctor was sure Michael would have a penchant for, as he’d insisted during several of their weekly one-sided screaming matches. It hadn’t meant anything to him in the hospital, but now he might be apt to prove the doctor right.

 

He knelt on the bed and touched a picture right above the pillow. The camera work wasn’t bad at all-- probably still amateur, but good enough to get in all the best details. It was a young woman; her blonde hair was plastered to her face with sweat and her wide eyes were red-ringed from tears. She was sprawled out in the mud, propped on her elbow and holding her arm up protectively against her attacker. Interestingly, the pinky finger on her raised hand was missing.

 

His eyes wandered up to another photograph. Another woman, also blonde but a big huskier than the last. She was lying face down with an arm outstretched, assumedly unconscious. The ring finger on her visible hand was gone.

 

He continued down the bed, flitting between the pictures. Redheads, blondes, brunettes; mostly white, but not exclusively; some thinner, some thicker; some with rope burns on their wrists and ankles, some not. All dirty from the struggle. All missing at least one finger.

 

Only one man had been photographed and plastered to the wall, and his was an especially grim image. His throat had been cut, sliced open to the point where his Adam’s apple was simply missing. From the angle the photographer chose, you could see exposed muscle and the interior of the man’s throat. His eyes were wide--though, Michael supposed, the stitches holding them open helped-- and his pupils pinpoints. Several of the teeth from his top row had been sloppily removed, more likely with a knife than something cleaner, like a pair of pliers. Regrettably, Michael couldn’t see his hands.

 

The man had been brutalized in a way that the women hadn’t (or, at least, hadn’t _yet_ ) and the sheer animalism of it made heat pool in Michael’s belly. He traced the outline of the man’s jaw, his split throat, the dip in his skull where his eyes were. He sighed softly, transfixed. Suddenly, he wished he hadn’t spent so much time idling at the carnival; he wanted to find one of the survivors, pin him to a wall and reenact the photograph with him. The thought made his toes curl.

 

Just, however, as he turned to leave, to check if there was someone still behind, he heard a raucous coughing outside. There was the sound of talking, though he could not hear the words, and the distinctive thump of affectionate hits to the horse’s side. Michael stared out the door.

 

Heavy footsteps climbed the steps into the wagon, shaking it slightly as the owner entered.

 

He turned, spotted Michael, and nearly leapt out of his skin.

 

“ _Christ!_ ” he cried. “What the hell are you doing here? You scared the shit out of me.”

 

Michael didn’t respond, though the urge to exclaim was heavy on his tongue.

 

The owner, heavyset, was dressed to the nines in that bright regalia Michael adored. His face was painted, red-on-blue-on-white, in that telltale circus folk way. One top of the carnival and the circus wagon and the gorgeous pictures of violence, there was this man, this clown. Behind his mask, Michael smiled. Before the mask, his only indication of emotion was the clenching and unclenching of his fists.

 

The clown noticed. He chuckled once-- _heh_ \-- as he tipped his chin at Michael. “I suppose you’re not one of the little rats, are you?”

 

Michael shook his head just so.

 

“Guess that means we’re coworkers,” the clown said with a laugh. He thrusted out his hand; Michael took it. “‘Name’s Jeffrey Hawk. You can call me whatever you’d like, so long as you’re not spittin’ at me.”

 

He laughed at his own joke; he was jovial, and for once Michael didn’t find it grating. He gave Jeffrey a firm handshake, in return Jeffrey gave him an approving _hmm_ that made Michael’s face warm.

 

“Do you have a name, boy?”

 

Michael nodded.

 

“You wanna tell me what it is?”

 

There was a pause. Michael shook his head.

 

“No?” Jeffrey’s lip quirked up. “All right then, pale face, that’s fine. I’ve met a few of you mute types around here already, so I know not to take it personal.”

 

Good, good; he understood. Some of the others had tried, fruitlessly, to push him. The fact that Jeffrey wouldn’t bother made him even better.

 

Michael pointed to the photograph of the man, the one that had given him senseless and deviant thoughts. Jeffrey stroked his stubbled chin. “You like that?”

 

A nod.

 

“Well, always nice to meet someone who’ll appreciate hard work.” He laughed again and his whole body laughed with him. “I took all those myself, you see. Developed ‘em myself too. Photography was never my calling, but I figure I did a pretty good job.”

 

He moved to Michael’s side, knocking a knuckle on the photo. “This one-- oh, this one has a good, good story to it. Now, I don’t want you to get it backwards, boy-- I don’t feel any certain way about men.” He elbowed Michael in the ribs-- a slight that Michael would have broken another man’s arm for. “Hell, I don’t feel any certain way about any of these others either. I like my women living, you see.

 

“But anyway, as I was saying. This fellow. This bastard was a mean sonuva-- a shit-eating fucker who liked to stick his nose into other people’s business. I’m sure you know the type.  
  
“One night, he comes knocking on my door and he says ‘Jeffrey Hawk, come out here right now!’ and he sounds angrier than a tomcat in a pen of bitches. So I go out to him and he’s waving papers in my face. I ask him what the hell his problem is, and he says to me ‘Margaret Brown-Howard!’ Just a name. Like I’m supposed to know who the hell that is.

 

“So I asked him, I asked him _who the hell that’s supposed to be_ , and he tells me it’s some woman who done been cut up out in Youngstown, Ohio about six months back. Now _that_ rang a bell.”

 

He moved over to the other side of the wagon, and gestured to another photo. This one was blurrier, a bit sloppily taken. “He meant this. It’s one of the first I took time to photograph. As you might could guess, this was Margaret, from back in ohh, I don’t know… 1972? Maybe a little bit earlier, I can’t recall. The early seventies were one long bender for me, I am afraid.

 

“Now this fellow-- his name was Chapman-- started spouting all kinds of accusations at me. He called me a monster and a murderer and a de-filer of the dead. Now I would have laughed all that off, since, hell, it was true! But it was so outlandish that no one would have believed him! I had quite a nice reputation, you see.”

 

His face darkened. “But that man, he called me a rapist and a _necro-phile_ and that I could not stand for. I left her body out in the middle of some backlot, unviolated. What the city folk do to a woman’s corpse is none of my business.” He raised a finger and pointed it to Michael, waving it. “It’s a hell of a thing to play with your food, but I’ll have you know I never needed to force myself on a woman.”

 

Michael didn’t especially care, but he believed him.

 

“Now, I’ll tell you, I was boilin’ inside by that point, but I kept my head. Told him it was all a big misunderstanding and that if he’d just come inside and have drink we could talk this all out.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Dumb fucker fell for it. Can you believe? That bitch idiot.”

 

Jeffrey moved to the table and lifted a glass bottle. He uncorked it and held it out to Michael. “Smell it.”

 

Michael did as he was told. When the scent hit his nostrils his brain took a sudden left turn. He staggered and, for just a moment, his eyes rolled back. He had to hold his head and recollect himself.

 

“Powerful stuff, ain’t it? You’re a sturdy boy, I can tell just by lookin’ at ya, but this shit’s mean enough to knock an elephant on its ass. If I wanted you out--” he snapped his fingers, “--it’d be just like that.”

 

He corked the bottle back up and set it aside. Michael’s thoughts were still settling in his brain when Jeffrey continued. “So I worked a little homemade magic on Chapman and needless to say, he didn’t put up much of a fight. I dragged him out to where no one could hear him, even if he just so happened to wake up, and the rest is history. I’ve had my fair share of men in my day, but he was special. I put real effort into him.”

 

Jeffrey sighed and rested his chin in his palm. He seemed to be reminiscing. There was a beat of silence.

 

Now _really_ riled up, Michael found another photo on the wall and he tapped his finger on it, looking to Jeffrey with as much patience as he could muster. The old dog grinned.

 

“Now, now, you won’t get another out of me tonight. You were here on a trial, weren’t you? You’ve long overstayed that, I’d say. I think you should be gettin’ back home to wherever it is the Entity’s got you _sitchiated_ in.”

 

Michael furrowed his brows up, face knitted up into a pout that, thank God, Jeffrey couldn’t see. He could have stayed and forced the old dog to bark, but he’d rather not make the only interesting person in the realm angry with him. With a gentle nudge of filthy, yellow-nailed hands, Michael left.

 

\--

 

He didn’t return to the wagon. Not right at away, at least. He’d burned up a dozen copies of the same wedding photo in the days that followed his first meeting with Jeffrey, but each time he hung back, simply hiding amongst the tents or pressing his ear to the wall of the wagon, listening to his own breathing and the sounds of music and laughter that drifted outside.

 

Often he made laps around the wagon and the perimeter, stalking, eyes bored into the little red caravan. When the door was cracked he was glued to it, roaming eyes taking in whatever they could.

 

Often Jeffrey wasn’t doing anything in particular. He slept or he traced his fingers over his photographs or his posters (whoever the young redheaded man was, he glowered at him); he smoked his disgusting cigars or he drank; he ate whatever the fat pig and the thin pig and the twiggy pig and the rabbit-pig cooked up for them. Most of all, in his waking hours, he worked on his bottles.

 

While Jeffrey himself was rather sloppy, there was nothing sloppy about his work. He was meticulous and thorough, but he also didn’t need recipes or books or anything but his own brain to work out the formulas. He measured and filled and set aside his pretty pink potions with an eye and a skill that, when he tried to picture himself doing it, made Michael’s hands shake.

 

Days of watching him, thinking about him, pining to sit in that empty chair or on that soft bed and _listen_ , confirmed one simple, undeniable fact to Michael: he wanted to be _friends_.

 

But how did one make friends, especially with a man like that? Michael couldn’t recall ever having someone he was close with-- how was one supposed to act? He had enough sense to know that stalking someone wasn’t the way to friendship. He could talk to him, but that would require-- obviously-- talking, so that plan was out. Maybe a gift? Everyone loved gifts. What to get him, though?

 

Michael thought and thought until he watched Jeffrey remove the bolts to his lockbox.

 

\--

 

Michael knocked. _One-two-three-four-five-six_ knocks in rapid succession. He was impatient and excited. The door cracked slightly.

 

“What, Ev-” Jeffrey stopped. “Oh thank goodness, it’s just you. ‘Thought I was in for another earful.”

 

He invited Michael inside and pat the bed. “Take a seat, boy.”

 

Michael shook his head.

 

Jeffrey laughed again (bowl full of jelly!) and took his place at the table. “You can stand if ya want. No skin off my nose.”

 

He took a cigar from its box, clipped off the end with a special cutter. _Oh._

 

(Michael had brought his knife. Suddenly he had an idea and he set it on one of the countertops.)

 

“What can I do for you, boy? You come back for another trip down memory lane?”

 

Michael shook his head.

 

“You just came to visit, then?”

 

Another shake of the head. Michael held out his left, his non-dominant, hand to Jeffrey, who raised a brow. He shook and simply released it.

 

How frustrating. He wanted Michael to choose for him.

 

Michael dug his hand into the cigar box.

 

“Well shit, boy, if that’s what you wanted you just had to ask. I’d have given you one but I didn’t take you for the smoking type.”

 

Michael held the cigar cutter in his palm.

 

It was golden and guillotine-style, with push-in levers on both sides. He turned it over in his palm; he liked the weight of it.

 

“Like that?  I got it from a drinkin’ buddy of mine a couple years back. It’s as sharp as the devil’s tongue, it is. Cuts like a dream.”

 

That made things easier.

 

Michael stared at his hand, then his hands. He wriggled his fingers. Jeffrey, he knew, had an assorted collection of them, but he seemed to have a preference for pinkies. That was fine.

 

Michael slipped the cigar cutter over his pinky like an awkward, cumbersome ring.

 

“What’re ya doing, b-”

 

_Snap._

 

Michael didn’t even feel the tendons cut, and the severing of bone was little more than pressure.

 

The finger fell into his open palm. When he looked back up to Jeffrey, his mouth was agape.

 

Michael presented the finger to him. Jeffrey took it, but said nothing.

 

Michael frowned. Had it not been enough? If the photographs told him anything, it was that Jeffrey generally only took one finger per encounter. Maybe it was different with the ones he knew he wouldn’t kill? Michael would ask, but as he opened his mouth his stomach churned.

 

He shifted the cigar cutter into his other hand, trying as best he could to avoid getting excess blood on it. Maybe Jeffrey wanted a bit more brutality. He was a performer after all-- maybe he liked _getting_ a show as much as he liked _giving_ one.

 

Again the cigar cutter goes over a pinky finger-- this time, however, he stilled it at the base of the _distal phalanges_ . He took in a small breath and _cut_. The tip of his finger came off with ease; he placed it on the table.

 

Down to the base of the _intermediate phalanges_ . _Cut._ Oof, that cut had made an awful shearing noise, like cutting through a hundred sheets of paper or a thousand strands of hair. The blood was pouring and slicking up the cigar cutter. Michael felt nothing.

 

Down to the base of the _proximal phalanges_. Last stop, every tendon off.

 

Michael gathered up the discarded pieces of his own finger and placed them beside their twin in Jeffrey’s palm. The man had picked up his jaw, but still he said nothing.

 

Was Jeffrey really that demanding? Was two not enough? Perhaps he was angry about all the blood that was now splattered across the table and on the floor? Michael wasn’t sure; his tunnel vision has taken over and he had only one thing on his mind.

 

While handling a knife with three fingers would be cumbersome, he could adjust. The cigar cutter slipped over his index finger, albeit with a touch of wiggling. He pressed in the levers.

 

His wrist was snatched and the cigar cutter was ripped off of his finger. Jeff was on his feet, face scrunched up in anger.

 

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing, boy?” There was fury in his voice. It was quite exciting. “Look what you’ve done! Just look!”

 

Michael didn’t have to look-- he’d watched himself do it, after all. He watched Jeffrey instead.

 

With a click of his tongue, Jeffrey yanked Michael toward the back of the wagon. He dug through the his cabinets and removed a medical kit, just like the ones he often spotted in chests or at the bases of used hooks.

 

“I realize that not everyone in our huntin’ circle is necessarily playing with a full deck, but you’d have to be pretty stupid to pull some shit like this.” Jeffrey scolded as he double-wrapped Michael’s hands in bandages. When those were secure, he found the cleanest rags he could and tightened them over the nubs to apply steady pressure. “What were you thinkin’?”

 

“...I wanted to give you a gift.” Michael was shocked by the sound of his own voice. It wasn’t especially cracked or high or odd-- it had simply slipped out from him without permission.

 

Jeffrey double-takes, visibly confused. “When most folks think of gifts, they think of wine, or chocolates or a new shirt. They don’t tend to mutilate themselves.”

 

Michel shrugged. When his hand was released, he gestured to the lockbox on the table.

 

“Those are…” Jeffrey sighed, kneading the bridge of his nose. “Michael, those aren’t gifts, you know that. Those are special.”

 

Michael cocked his head to the side. Jeffrey grabbed Michael’s finger from the table and held it up for him. “This doesn’t do anything for me, because I didn’t work for it. Do you understand?”

 

_Nope._

 

“Think about it this way: Everyone knows about that little vixen you love chasing around. Well, what if someone just dumped her on your doorstep one day, dead as a doornail? Would that be satisfyin’ to you?”

 

 _Of course not!_ The trials were one thing, but no one else was allowed to _kill_ Laurie. The thought made his blood boil. He tried to push it from his mind; the image of her-- _his_ sister, _his_ obsession, _his_ target-- gone, killed by some bystander, was too poisonous a thought.

 

“So you see what I mean? Even if they had good intentions, it still wouldn’t be right. She’s something you gotta work for.”

 

He nodded. If he felt shame he’d be feeling a metric fuckton of it right now. Despite being smarter than, well, basically everyone, Michael felt exceptionally stupid in that moment. Or maybe what he felt were the effects of the blood loss. There was no way to tell, really.

 

Michael sat on the bed, Jeffrey scrubbed the blood off of the floor and table, then he took his seat there. Before long, he was back at his bottle work.

 

Michael stayed for a while, watching in silence, nodding along to any comment or anecdote Jeffrey made. Eventually, the bottling was done and the silence became deafening, strange.

 

Michael’s bandages were changed, though-- through the Entity’s nonsensical dark magic-- the nubs had sealed themselves off. He most likely didn’t need new bandages, but better safe than sorry was the expression, wasn’t it?

 

He saw himself out. After the whole self-mutilation bit, things had gotten weird very quickly. He supposed he could say goodbye to the only connection he’d had any desire to make. Before he descended the stairs, however, Jeffrey stopped him.

 

“Take this,” he said, dropping Michael’s trisected finger in his palm. “At least take it over to that Texan boy. He’ll drop it into the chili or something.”

 

Yeah, no, that wasn’t going to happen if he was being honest. He nodded to be nice but as soon as he returned to Haddonfield he’d toss these out for the birds.

 

He pointed to the finger still laying on the table.

 

“You want that one back too?”

 

He shook his head.

 

“‘Suppose I have no choice but to keep it then, don’t I?” Jeffrey rubbed his chin, brows knitting. “I’ll have found something to do with it by the next time you come ‘round.”

 

_Next time?_

 

“I’ll have some gin for you next time, too, supposing you’re a drinking man.”

 

_Oh!_

 

He nodded furiously, despite himself. He’d never touched alcohol in his life, and he never intended to but-- _next time!_ Next time.

 

He jumped down the stairs like a child, waved goodbye like a child, dashed off like a child. The faster he left, the faster it would be _next time._

 

\--

 

He tried the gin-- it was as awful as he suspected. Jeffrey had laughed at the way his face scrunched up and the way he’d leaned out of a window to spit it out.

 

He settled into the bed as Jeffrey, still laughing, took another swig from the bottle. He laid back, propped his long legs on the wall and flopped his head into the soft pillows.

 

Jeffrey started into some story about the first time _he_ drank, _well_ before he was Michael’s age, and all the mischief that subsequently followed. Michael was happy to listen to the him, the first person in a long time who interested him. Who didn’t grate on his every nerve.

 

While he listened his eyes traveled up, up, up over the table and settled, content, on the dangling shape of a curling finger wrapped in black satin ribbon.

 


End file.
